


Atlas and Herakles

by braigwen_s



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Attempts At Support, Gen, Implied Hurt Implied Comfort, Light(-ish) Angst, Loyalty, Vetinari Is Sick And Tired (Literally) Disabled Agenda Writers Inc.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26675806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: According to ancient Greek myth, Herakles briefly took the burden of the heavens from the shoulders of Atlas.  He then switched it out again and ran away, with Atlas swearing at him.  Rufus Drumknott isn't going to take all of the heavens, he only wants a little bit, and running away is the last thing he wants to do.
Relationships: Rufus Drumknott & Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Atlas and Herakles

“My lord,” said Rufus, “may I make an observation?”

His Lordship rolled his pen backwards and forwards between his fingers, like Rufus did with his pencils and other people did with cigars. His head was lifted at an exactly ninety-degree angle, he noticed, and the light from the candles cast his face into iron. He looked very, very tired, and rather ill. “You may,” he said. It was normally _of course you may_.

“You look very tired, sir. I think that you should get some sleep.”

His Lordship stopped rolling his pen, and his voice was the specific kind of acidic that was more for a self-defence than an attack. “It doesn’t work like that, Drumknott,” he said. “If I were to put my burdens down, however briefly it may be for, they will be lost.” Something in the way His Lordship arranged his words made Rufus think less of formalised sentence structure, and more of somebody defaulting to the syntax of their first language. It had been Genuan, Rufus suspected – not only was the Vetinari family from there, according to Twurp’s Peerage, but when His Lordship softly cursed to himself, or murmured something to Wuffles, that was the most common language. 

Rufus was very good at reading, including between the lines. His Lordship hadn’t meant that the city would collapse into chaos (at least not initially). He had meant that if he put his burdens down, he wouldn’t be able to pick them back up again. This couldn’t be in the sense of setting his position down, because he had already been stripped of the Patricianship several times and then regained it. That left the sentence meaning that if he put his burdens down, he wouldn’t have the strength to pick them back up, like a long-distance runner who cannot stop because then they won’t start again. 

“Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing,” he suggested. “The Guilds are learning to balance things on their own, and there is Commander Vimes and –”

“They are not yet ready for that.” Once again, Rufus thought there was a lapse of language, that he was not thinking in Morporkian, and that his translation wasn’t so smooth. It did not encourage him to drop his point. If His Lordship’s syntax was suffering, he was not fit for the intricate word games that composed meeting with Slant.

“Then you don’t have to set it down,” he said. “Just … maybe you could let some other people bear some weight.” It hadn’t been phrased nicely; Rufus sounded clumsy to his own ears, uncertain like a shy schoolboy attempting to approach a teacher. That wasn’t necessarily a bad way for his suggestion to come across, because it was a particularly nonthreatening slant on a threatening suggestion. It was sincerely meant, of course, and he wasn’t suggesting a shift in power, just a shift in … workload. But there were people who were paranoid, and people who were served cyanide more than they were served actual almond product, and His Lordship was the latter.

“You are one of these people, Drumknott?”

His Lordship’s tone was utterly neutral, and Rufus realized it was a gauge of loyalty. Was Rufus seeking glory, or a favour, or power that he should not have? Was he trying to give power to someone else? 

He didn’t consider his response overmuch; he didn’t feel he needed to. He had nothing to hide from His Lordship, except that which His Lordship had requested for him to hide. They both knew this. Commander Vimes knew this, even, and the domestic servant Mildred Easy. “Yes, sir, I am. I’m good at going unnoticed, and I already read some of your paperwork and correspondence. I should like to take on more, if it would help you. I want to help you, sir,” he added. “There are people who want to help you. You’re very good at tricking people into helping each other, but maybe it would be helpful if you remembered sometimes that you come under ‘people,’ too.”

His Lordship looked at him for a long time. His quill pen must have been laid down while Rufus was speaking, because it was now neatly cleaned of ink and arranged in the pot of other pens. “Very well,” he said, using his cane to push himself up to his feet. “I will take that under consideration. Thank you, Drumknott.”

The thanks was spoken in the tone of a dismissal, but Rufus was pretty sure it was real thanks. 

His Lordship licked his finger, and moved to pinch out the candles, but Rufus got there first, placing a douter over them. He met His Lordship’s eyes defiantly. The message he gave was clear: _you don’t want to let people help you, because that has hurt you in the past, yet you’re still ingesting concentrate of diffused candlewick, even though that almost killed you. I’m putting my foot down, sir_.

Rufus looked away first, but he knew that he had still won. His Lordship said “good night” softly, and limped away towards his rooms.

“Good night, sir,” replied Rufus, warmly, then murmured, when His Lordship had passed earshot, “sleep well”. 

He had left the paperwork out on his desk. Rufus put it away neatly in his own desk, before heading for bed as well. He could, theoretically, have completed it still that night, but he was not a person given to being a hypocrite.

**Author's Note:**

> A douter is a little pot on a stick made for extinguishing candles.


End file.
